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vegan recipe: chocolate strawberry parfait with coconut whipped cream

My favorite pregnant ladies came to dinner last night (they are also three of my favorite people) and I made them a Greek spread complete with chickpea-zucchini fritters, tzatziki, tahini sauce, and a Mediterranean farro salad. But, the highlight in my mind (and maybe in theirs) was dessert. Dark chocolate mousse, fresh strawberries, vanilla cookies, coconut whipped cream, and toasted coconut, all layered into one delicious parfait.

These treats are just the right amount of sweet and, if you buy your favorite vegan cookies like I did, come together in just a few minutes. You won’t be sorry, but you will need a spatula to get at the last bits of pudding stuck to the sides of the glass (to steal Sara’s sentiment)!

To assemble: take the chilled chocolate mousse from the recipe below, a quart of sliced, fresh strawberries, your favorite vegan cookies (vanilla or almond flavored), and the coconut whipped cream from the recipe below and layered the ingredients in any way you wish in four glasses. I also topped mine with leftover toasted coconut from these delicious things, but chocolate shavings or more fresh strawberries would work great!

I am pretty sure I’ve seen this on the internet for at least five years, it was someone’s genius idea, and so whomever that is, we should all say thank you!

Ingredients

1 can of full-fat (important!) coconut milk chilled in the refrigerator at least over night

4 T sifted (also important!) powdered sugar

½ t extract (almond or vanilla, or another flavor, depending on what you’re making)

Instructions

Chill a mixing bowl and a whisk in the freezer overnight, and chill your can of coconut milk in the fridge over night.

Once your coconut milk has been in the fridge overnight the cream and liquid have separated, and for this you are only using the cream, so flip the can upside down, open it, and pour out the few inches of liquid that have collected on the bottom (drink it up or use it in a smoothie).

Put the remaining thick coconut cream into your cold mixing bowl and whisk (I have read that you can do this by hand but I used my stand mixer because I’m lazy and it doesn’t get enough use anyway) for a few (2-3) minutes on medium-high speed until the coconut cream starts to look fluffy.

Add the sifted powdered sugar and the extract (if you like) and keep whipping until the cream is stiff and makes peaks (and generally is the consistency of whipped cream).